The view from here

For the past few days now, I’ve been trying to figure out what to say about Tibet. There isn’t much I can add, really. I’ve never been there, and what is worth saying has largely been said by people closer to the situation more knowledgeable about the complexities involved.

So I’ve been reading, and because the internet is social, I’ve been posting links to news from Western China on Twitter, Google, Del.icio.us and Facebook. I’ve compiled those links into one RSS feed, which should be available within mainland China, where the news sites themselves are blocked.

I can’t help feeling a twinge of regret at not being in China right now. But being in America has its advantages. Namely, I don’t need a proxy to get my news. And realistically, Dalian is not meaningfully closer to Tibet than California. I can probably get more information here than I could there, or at least I can get it faster.

Hopefully, the links I’ve posted will be useful for anyone trying to keep up with the news. As much as anyone who’s been in China a month knows how to get around the Great Firewall, it’s also true that searching for news using proxies can be mind-numbingly slow and endlessly frustrating. That’s what the Firewall does: It makes it just difficult enough that casual browsers will go someplace more harmonious.

Here’s the feed.

Sources (rss):
China Digital Times: Tibet
Items tagged Tibet in my del.icio.us feed and in Rick’s feed

Also, here’s my Google shared items, which is filtered to only included Tibet-related posts in the pipe.

Let me know if there are more sources I should add.

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Marines and Motherfuckers

About three paragraphs into the story I was writing on a the homecoming party for a squad of local Marines, my editor popped her head around the cubicle with a suggestion:

“Do you think you could take out the drinking and the swearing?” she asked. We were, she reminded me, a family newspaper. (Note: It’s been a couple years since I worked there.)

I’ve never figured out what that means, exactly, a “family newspaper.” We printed some grisly stuff: car and train wrecks, blood stains on sidewalk, skeletons of houses gutted by fire.

And marines are vulgar. Take away the drinking, swearing, crude talk of sex and how it relates to consuming a Jello-shot, and you have something more bland, less real. (My marine friends call this the Army). These men had just come back from their second tour in Iraq. Foul language was the least of their issues.

Pat Thornton sent me on this nostalgia trip with his post this morning, noting that Stars & Stripes grapples with the same issue:

My paper is willing to print “shit” in a story but only in certain editions. Our Mideast edition is keeping the word, while our editions in Europe and the Pacific are dropping it. The Web will not feature the word as well.
…
The expletive was left in the Mideast edition because it’s a theater of war. The feeling was that troops in combat have a different community standard than those living on base with their families.

As much as it is our job, as journalists, to promote civic and civil debate, to calm the passions of our readers with facts and with reason, to enlighten, we’re also in the business of saying it like it is.

We’re not the Family Channel.

Posted in News, mess of a language, self-indulgence | 1 Comment »

Slouching towards Beijing

Note: This is cross-posted on Lost Laowai.

China wouldn’t be my first guess of places American lawmakers would look for legislative ideas. But Mashable points to a proposed law in Kentucky that would make it illegal for websites to allow anonymous comments and fine site owners $500 for the first offense. Tim Couch, the state representative who sponsored the bill, says it’s necessary to fight “online bullying,” according to WTVQ in Lexington.

The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site.

Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.

Sounds familiar, no? Couch’s reasoning is different, but this sounds awfully familiar to China’s old Real Name Registration rule for bloggers.

China, at least, could get away with trying blunt-instrument regulation of online speech. But Kentucky? Bit of a problem with the First Amendment there. Not to mention the problem of enforcing such a rule. As Mashable notes, much of this stems from suicides supposedly linked to MySpace, which is starting to sound like a newer and less bat-hungry version of Ozzy Osbourne.

This time around, in response to recent suicides on MySpace and other events taking place online that resulted supposedly from online, US lawmakers are willing to suspend the right to speak freely to apply a bandaid to the problems of American young ones’ self esteem. Understandably, when the irresponsible actions of a few lead to the death of a family member, immediate and decisive action is wanted to rectify the issue legally. Unfortunately, banning all anonymous commentary online is about like banning all gossip publications because Britney Spears became a bad mother due to overzealous paparazzi, or banning everything from pocket knives to nuclear arms because someone was mugged at the corner store.

As I mentioned, this debate has happened already. China toyed with it, then gave up. Maybe Couch would benefit from revisiting what Wang Xiaofeng wrote two years ago:

Insults and swearing did not start because of the Internet or blogs; libel started when people first started writing. Fraud and confidence tricks are ancient crimes, you can’t just blame them on the Internet. Is it possible that the real name system will solve all these problems? It’s like that old joke: if the eighth steamed bun is the one that makes you full, why bother eating the first seven?

The text of House Bill 775 is available here.

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Things are bad in Africa

You knew that, but it’s time we told you again. Death, disease, poverty that defies definition. It’s an old storyline. Sure, sometimes we need to be reminded how bleak things are, but at times, I find myself screaming at such a story: “SO WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT THIS?”

Like today, though it really wasn’t about Africa.

Editor & Publisher added up circulation losses at newspapers across the country, finding, without much surprise, things are bad.

In just four years the top newspapers in the U.S. have collectively lost about 1.4 million copies in daily circulation, E&P has found. But since the reported numbers come out every six months, the overall decline for individual papers may not hit home for many. Each fall off is usually in the low- to mid-single digits — but it sure adds up.

Fair enough. Good to know. So what do we do about it? I have a few thoughts.

• Make this everyone’s issue.

  I didn’t think much about the business side of newspapers in college. I hated it. That’s what business managers were for. But the business has changed, and now we all need to get in on the discussion. It’s not up to publishers, editors, Sam Zell or Stanford to save us.

• Figure out what we’re doing right. Do more of it.

  E&P leaves a big chunk out of this story. Hint: It starts with www. Much as we’ve lost in paper, we’ve gained in web audience. More, even. I’m not Polly Anna-ish about this, but we do need to understand where we can grow and make the most of it.

• When in doubt, think small.

  Quit your bitching and fix something, anything. Make your life easier. Stop worrying about macroeconomic trends forecasting an impending downturn in the likelihood of further streamlining in corporate structure. Go gather some data and graph it on Swivel. Shoot some video of how said data effects people’s lives and upload it to YouTube/Brightcove/Blip.tv. Publish it using an open-source CMS.

Look, the business model went and changed. The print edition isn’t what it used to be, I get it. But it’s time to stop whining and start building something worthy of all the nostalgia we keep throwing at ink on paper.

Posted in News, projects | 1 Comment »